Bananas are great and all, but in the summer there's better fruit around—and it bakes up even better.

Strawberry season may be officially over in most of the country, but that hasn't stopped me from buying them. Serviceable—even good—strawberries can be found in the supermarket year-round (if you know what to look for), and while, sure, I prefer bright, local, in-season strawberries, the store-bought berries are perfect for making my favorite strawberry treat. It's a treat I took for granted until recently, a recipe that, when I brought it up in conversation, was met with blank stares and questioning remarks.

I'm talking about strawberry-nut bread. It's something I've been making for years—I even won a 4-H baking competition with a loaf when I was nine years old, after receiving intel that it was the head judge's favorite variation of quick bread.

When asked if it's a “regional thing,” I can't say for certain. It certainly not something I've ever seen promoted or extolled as a virtue of my home state of Tennessee. Cursory looks into its heritage seem to suggest it's a recipe that came out of the American tearoom boom at the turn of the 20th century; the recipe I used growing up came from an old church cookbook. Whatever its provenance, strawberry-nut bread is a totally delicious breakfast or after-school snack.

When I looked at old recipes for the bread, I saw they often relied on frozen berries for a rosy summer glow and sweet flavor. But since it's still the tail end of strawberry season, Epi Food Director Rhoda Boone and I were set on using fresh.

To make our version, we started with Our Favorite Banana Bread, a recipe Rhoda perfected after testing the highest rated banana breads across our site. After tossing the bananas out the window, we mixed in 2 1/2 cups of hulled, quartered strawberries, which we coarsely mashed so that a few chunky strawberry bits remained. We also sifted 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon into the dry ingredients—an ingredient commonly found in those older strawberry-nut bread recipes which rounds out the strawberries’ sweetness nicely. And that’s it. The method and cook time are the same as in Rhoda's banana bread recipe.

The baked loaf is sweet, but not overly so, and slightly tangy with pink flecks throughout. And it's perfect toasted and slathered with a little butter. After her first mind-blowing taste, Adina Steiman—one of those formerly-dubious colleagues—put it as succinctly as it can be put: "I was skeptical. Now I am convinced." After your first bite, you will be too.